Big Muff Pi review by Electro-Harmonix

Sound — 10
I'm using it on a Peavey amp with clean settings and I can pull of any sound I want. With the sustain all the way up and the tone just a slight bit down, you can emulate almost all (if not all) Silversun pickups songs and make really any song sound so much better.

Overall Impression — 10
Overall I am very impressed with this pedal. I had explored every possibility to do with distortion and this is the only one I'm totally satisfied with. I've been playing with it a little less than a month but I have put it through it's pases and even the battery has lived up to the pedal expectation. I estimate it has been on a total of 15 hours on the one battery. I have not found a song that can't use a big helping of muff.

Reliability & Durability — 9
This is one of the most dependable pedals I've used. I have a Boss MT-2 metalzone and what I find with it and many other distortion pedals like it is the fact that it seems to amplify the small amount of static I get fro certian guitars into a low buzz, but with this pedal there has been no such trouble. As far a durability is concerned, jump all over this bad boy. It has a nice medal casing that has stopped any damage I could have caused so far. The only reason I am giving it an 9 is that the nobs are reliable all the time. I'm not saying they don't read right, I'm just saying that nobs are easily turned and if you intend to jump all over it, you may change ur settings slightly (seeing as the closest nob seems to be the tone for me).

Ease of Use — 10
O boy do I like fuzz! And this is one fuzz! It has three nobs to easy control your volume, sustain and tone. The sustain is the crunch that you get in the fuzz, the tone controls and makes miner detail cahnges which is really what you need to get the perfect sound.

Jimi Hendrix never touched a big muff. Mike Matthews claims he was passing by outside the studio and looked through the window to see Jim using a prototype version. Why would that be how he knows Jimi used one? wouldn't it be more plausible to say I gave Jimi a prototype. So where's the recording of the alleged big muff prototype? In 1975 there was a Big Muff ad that said "Jimi Hendrix relied on the Big Muff PI for his electric-lady sound". RELIED ON?!? In the mid '70's people were dumb enough to think man walked on the moon but all you need do is ask the question; Which tracks from Electric Ladyland sound anything like a Big Muff? None!..The only Big Muff Jimi touched was Monika Danemans'

Let me clear up any confusion. Electro-Harmonix is NOT lying when they say that Jimi used the Big Muff. However, he didn't use it very much, he just tried out a prototype of it, and he was very impressed by it and wanted to use it on his next album. But still, EHX should have been more specific so as not to mislead so many people into thinking they were lying.